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Letter

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In a letter dated 5 March 2010, Bell Canada and Bell Aliant Regional Communications, Limited Partnership requested a two-month extension to the date for launching Internet Protocol Relay (IP Relay) service in order to find an appropriate third party vendor to provide this service.

As noted by Bell Canada and Bell Aliant in their letter, in Broadcasting and Telecom Regulatory Policy 2009-430 (BTRP 2009-430), at paragraph 21, the Commission ordered that all LECs, including wireless CLECs, and VoIP providers that are required to provide TTY Relay to provide IP Relay, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by 21 July 2010. In the same paragraph, the Commission allowed parties to satisfy the obligation to provide IP Relay by providing the service directly or by outsourcing the provision of the service to a third-party.

Bell Canada and Bell Aliant submitted that they required an additional two months (i.e. to 21 September 2010) to find a third party vendor to provide IP Relay Service. Bell Canada and Bell Aliant submitted that “Unfortunately, due to the tight timelines associated with the RFP, the Companies did not receive a sufficient number of acceptable responses to ensure that they were able to select the most appropriate vendor on reasonable terms.” They further submitted that “this short extension is essential to ensure that the Companies launch a high quality IP Relay service. The Companies are of the opinion that it is more important to get the service right on a slightly delayed timeline than to launch an inferior service earlier.”

The Commission considers it will be of significant value for users of relay services for high quality IP relay services to be made available. In this case, the Commission finds that the two-month extension requested by Bell Aliant and Bell Canada in order to improve the quality of their IP relay service is acceptable.

In light of the above, the Commission finds it appropriate to grant Bell Aliant and Bell Canada the requested extension.